Long term investing can be life changing when you buy and hold the truly great businesses. And we've seen some truly amazing gains over the years. To wit, the Signet Jewelers Limited (NYSE:SIG) share price has soared 511% over five years. This just goes to show the value creation that some businesses can achieve. In more good news, the share price has risen 27% in thirty days. It really delights us to see such great share price performance for investors.

Let's take a look at the underlying fundamentals over the longer term, and see if they've been consistent with shareholders returns.

See our latest analysis for Signet Jewelers

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the five years of share price growth, Signet Jewelers moved from a loss to profitability. That kind of transition can be an inflection point that justifies a strong share price gain, just as we have seen here.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on Signet Jewelers' earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Signet Jewelers' TSR for the last 5 years was 558%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Signet Jewelers shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 42% over the last year. That's including the dividend. However, the TSR over five years, coming in at 46% per year, is even more impressive. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Signet Jewelers better, we need to consider many other factors. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for Signet Jewelers you should be aware of.

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: many of them are unnoticed AND have attractive valuation).